


The Snows of Change

by Merfilly



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Charity Auctions, F/M, Post-Series, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-09 18:31:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12282102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: Ahsoka Tano has been sent to touch base with an informant for the Rebellion. Turns out, she knows him.





	The Snows of Change

**Author's Note:**

  * For [colls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/colls/gifts).



Two hard years on the run, trying to survive, making mistakes as she learned who she was without the Order, without — 

— Ahsoka Tano, sometimes called Fulcrum, once called Snips, dragged her head out of her misery and looked forward again, squinting even in the goggles protecting her eyes. She was better suited to cold weather work than many would imagine, having been born to taiga and tundra natives of Shili. That didn't mean she liked having to work her way through a snowstorm that was fasting working its way toward blizzard to reach this supposed vital informant for the Rebellion.

Why had she let her handler talk her into this? Oh, yes, because Bail Organa could sweet talk an akul into lying down and giving up a tooth voluntarily.

She sighted on the goal, a small cabin with honest to Force smoke rising into the swirling snow from a chimney stack, and forged on. This would have been a lot easier if her speeder bike hadn't quit on her when the cabin was only barely in sight. Approaching on foot left her feeling vulnerable. However, she had the Force, she had a pair of lightsabers that sang with her attunement, and she was confident.

Nothing would break that again, not so long as the Empire was out there for her to tear down.

* * *

The door of the cabin was unlocked and a voice inside had told her to enter but keep her hands clearly in sight. The hood and scarf and wind were all interfering with the full range of her hearing, and the voice wasn't close to the door, making it even harder to pick out key characteristics. Ahsoka felt like she was going in blind, but didn't sense an outright threat.

"A friend of the fraternity sent me," Ahsoka said, not daring to reach up and get the muffling scarf off until the person calmed enough to allow safe movement. She didn't want to hurt anyone, but knew how hair-trigger her reflexes were about harm aimed her own way.

"Don't keep in touch with them much any longer," and now Ahsoka heard the inflections, the timbre, and could feel all the points of recognition click into place.

"REX?!"

* * *

From the moment Rex had spotted the traveler, his skin had itched, but he could not very well escape in the middle of a snowstorm. When the being made it to the door, and came in with hands out and away from their body, the itch changed to something bordering on nostalgia.

How many times had he seen the particular way a hood tented over a pair of horns? 

It also brought an ache in his chest. Destroying all evidence of his commander's life, of his own, had also made it damned impossible to find her again, once he deemed it safe enough to try.

The code phrase had been worked out early that first year, when he had broken into the Alderaanian embassy, to learn more than his skulking could grant him, trusting that either Alderaan was still faithful to his own Senator's ideals, or that he didn't really care to keep living in the _haran_ that was the Empire.

What he didn't expect in the least was to hear his commander, his wonderful and brilliant 'Soka, calling his name in such shock.

"Commander?"

The hands moving would have been a flag to get his blasters talking on anyone else, but he _knew_ it was her. Watching her tear the hood back, seeing blue and white montrals (so tall now) escaping the covering, the dusky orange skin and its distinctive white marks emerging all rolled into his shock, making his hands shake enough that he holstered the blasters rather than let it be seen so clearly.

"Hello, my captain," she said in a soft voice, eyes locking on his, and he dared to hope that was actual pleasure lighting them, making her sound so gentle with him.

"If I'm hallucinating, galaxy, let me be!" Rex said then, a smile touching his lips.

Not even a heartbeat later, Ahsoka's arms were around him, and he was putting his own around her waist, both leaning into each other with a fierce clinging strength, sharing that fear of losing one another yet again.

* * *

Somehow, they had managed to get her out of the rest of the winter gear, and spiced cocoa in their hands, before settling on the pillows near the fireplace. Rex had drank his fill of seeing her, so tall and fit and muscular without being bulky. In turn, she had looked him over, head to toe, teasing over the still-shaven head, the full beard and mustache, while also letting him see how relieved she was to see him strong as ever.

"Organa got to you too?" he finally asked, when the silence of not knowing how to break two years of separation weighed too strongly on him.

She laughed softly. "More that he pulled me in and gave me a focus before I got too many innocents hurt. This rebellion is nothing like the war that honed me, Rex."

"He didn't press, when I said I wanted to try and find others like me, that escaped the end," Rex said. "I pass word back, here and there, through established comm drops, but mostly I've been looking for my brothers, pointing them to safety."

"He sent me here to let you know the drops aren't secure anymore, and to see if you would take a more active role. Without, of course, telling me who he was sending me to," Ahsoka answered that. She let go of the mug with one hand to get it on his knee, as close as they were sitting. "Now that I'm here… I can't ask it."

Unspoken were the horrors they had faced together. She did not need to say why she refused to ask. Rex knew, and the love he harbored pounded harder in his chest to see her still protecting him.

"You don't have to ask, 'Soka," he told her, using her name as something of a vow, a promise to never let her be alone, to fight without him, ever again. "I am still your captain, and you are still my commander. I don't want it any other way."

"Rex—"

"No, sir," he cut in, to head off the speech on how she knew he had been betrayed, on all he had lost. "We should stick together. The general'd want it. I want it. And I think you want it as well."

She ducked her face down before meeting his eyes again. "How do you know me so well, even now?"

"Made a point of studying you, from the moment Skywalker said you were staying," Rex said. "More, you let me know you, joining me and my brothers on a level few Jedi ever bothered to reach."

He covered her hand on his knee, and sighed softly, radiating contentment.

"I want you at my side, Rex, but… as more than just my captain," she said after a moment. "You held more meaning to me than that even before you saved me."

Rex looked at her with a long searching gaze, then half-smiled. "Just returning the favor… and we saved each other, that last day. As to the rest? This storm's going to be a few days, if not a week. I think we can work on hammering out just where we stand with each other in that space of time, before we leave together."

He tipped his head just a little, opening his body language just a little more, fingers squeezing hers.

Ahsoka wasn't so inexperienced as to ignore that they were, even on this untraveled path, in tune with each other. She leaned in, pressing her lips to his lightly, before pulling back to verify her hopes.

For answer, he followed her, and claimed a kiss of his own, before both mugs were set aside. It might just be kisses and touches for now, as they relearned each other, but the pulse of their hearts were already in accord as to where this would go.

No words were needed as captain and commander wove new vows to one another, written with the love and respect they had carefully ignored on that last mission together. They had a new future to find now.


End file.
